


For Emma - with Love and Squalor

by Pretzelrosecoloredglasses



Category: Emma (2020), Emma - Jane Austen
Genre: 1950s, Age gap between characters, Alternate Universe - Historical, Dealing with war and trauma, F/M, George has PTSD, If you want to have the age gap conversation find me in the comments, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28097001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pretzelrosecoloredglasses/pseuds/Pretzelrosecoloredglasses
Summary: This is just an idea I've had bouncing around for a while. AU of Emma set in the circumstances of J.D. Sallinger's For Esmé - with Love and Squalor. Emma met George Knightly for a piece of an hour in April of 1944 in Devon, where he was training for D-Day. They began corresponding regularly in 1945. In 1950, George receives an invitation to her wedding, which he cannot attend. In lieu of that, he writes down some notes about their first and only meeting in-person, and the impact Emma had on a traumatized soldier over a year later. Little does George know, the wedding was canceled before he even received his invitation.
Relationships: Frank Churchill/Emma Woodhouse, Frank Churchill/Jane Fairfax, George Knightley/Emma Woodhouse
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	For Emma - with Love and Squalor

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I am posting this mostly because I had a chapter of something that deserves to exist in the world. I don't know if I'll continue it, especially since it it so niche, but please enjoy what's there. And let me know if you're interested!

December 1950:

For Emma, with Love and Squalor

They planned the wedding for the winter on purpose. After all, no one could travel in February, and they certainly wouldn’t do it just to end up in Scotland. The oldest relatives would refuse due to cold weather, the youngest because of busy work schedules and children in school. It would end up being only immediate family, of whom Emma and Frank were blessed with almost none.

Henry would take the week off school, which suited him fine, and Isabella would be duty bound to herd her husband and family up North. That, at least, was an amusing benefit of the situation. Frank’s father could be trusted, as always to attend, and also to bring his wife, Emma’s dear Mrs. Weston. His aunt could be equally depended upon not to make the trip, much to his delight. Between them, the minister, and a handful of local friends, the wedding party hadn’t been expected to exceed two dozen. As it turned out, the wedding party didn’t even hit two.

Emma had been raised to have the most impeccable manners of any young lady in England – when she applied herself, that is – but she had to admit that she was at a loss. What did one get one’s ex-fiancé on the occasion of his aunt’s death and subsequent marriage? Did she give condolence or congratulations? If Emma knew anything about Frank, both responses were applicable to both occasions.

Flowers meant a funeral, fruit meant a honeymoon. She considered gift-wrapping the winter coat that still hung in the downstairs closet. That would certainly send a message, perhaps a sentiment that might be more appropriate. The truth was, though, she didn’t want to say much of anything to Frank because she didn’t know how she felt about the whole thing.

Unlike Mrs. Weston, Emma was not angry. After all, she’d never taken Frank’s promises at face-value. She certainly never expected him to expect much from her. It was not love. She could not feel spurned or cheated. No, instead, she felt like, for the past several months, she’d been a set piece in Frank’s life that he could proudly display. It was an ugly thing to do to someone. Now that she knew that particular pain, Emma had only the deep shame of committing the same crime. Whatever she felt for Frank was overshadowed the self-hatred she felt from the revealed ugliness within herself.

And how could she tell anyone the truth? The whole village expected her to be furious and devastated. They watched her like she was a show about to start. Even worse, Henry and Mrs. Weston seemed to be waiting for her to fall apart. There was hesitation in every room she entered.

Henry. Henry, who had looked up to Frank more than he ever had to Emma or even Isabella. The day he arrived for Christmas holidays he announced himself by smashing his violin into the fire. It had been a gift from Frank last Christmas. A promise to teach him. Instead, the sweet fourteen-year-old boy that Emma had watched over for eight years stood two inches taller than she’d last seen him and declared that he would kill Frank Weston if he ever showed his face in Highbury again.

In terms of gifts, though... that was an idea.

It was Christmas Eve when Emma left her house for the first time since hearing the news of Frank Churchill’s marriage. It fell on a Sunday that year, and she felt particularly in need of

forgiveness lately. Everyone stared at them, but the occasion of a holy sermon forced them to keep any gossip to a low murmur, and hopefully enough subtlety to appease a minister.

Not that the minister present didn’t have a few choice comments of his own. Emma worked very hard not to react when Elton glanced her way at particularly poignant passages. When he called for the congregation to ‘say a word for those who are not with us tonight,’ his eyes were bowed but certainly trained on her. His face looked ugly with a smirk on it.

Instead of reacting, she instructed Henry, “Say a prayer for poor Mrs. Churchill with me.”

Henry looked up in horror. After a moment, Emma corrected herself. “For Frank’s aunt. She passed in her sleep a fortnight ago.”

It was only as rustling of moving bodies broke the silence that it occurred to Emma that, in five weeks, she might have become ‘Poor Mrs. Churchill’ herself. And so, despite the stares and the whispers, she felt nothing but relief returning home alone with Henry.

***  
George received the invitation to the wedding of Lady Emma Woodhouse and Frank

Churchill in the winter of their seventh year of acquaintance. It was definitely an accident of transatlantic mail that the invitation arrived on Christmas Eve, just over a month before the occasion. After all, he’d known letters to get lost in the mail for over a month between Chicago and Highbury. It was possible that Emma hadn’t meant any kind of rudeness in sending something so last minute. The date of the wedding, though, could not have been accidental.

_February?_ he thought distastefully. _In Scotland? Did she want no one to come?_ he had to wonder, incredulously. Emma was the sort of girl he’d always imagined to be sent off in the style of a small princess, with plenty of fussy lace and ten days of pointless traditional events. Now that he considered it, though, that was a falsehood he’d invented in the distaste of gigantic American weddings that were the fashion lately. In fact, in over six years of correspondence, Emma had never mentioned a particular affinity for bombastic displays. She appreciated style and respected the power of image, of course, but she always seemed more focused on the notion of being seen as an intellectual. Serious, practical, intelligent. Even so, that didn’t explain Scotland and just over a month’s notice.

It must have been one of her schemes. Perhaps she really was avoiding someone. It wasn’t a stretch for Emma. She was always telling him, shamelessly, about some manipulation she’d enacted on the people in her life. It was a shame, though, that whoever she was avoiding would also push away real friends who might have celebrated such a day with her. Better to confront whoever it was and live with the consequences, than have one’s wedding in February.

As it was, George didn’t even ask his editor for the time off. He had already taken time off in January to move his mother into her new house, and it was just after Christmas off as well. Instead, he thought long and hard about an appropriate message to send. After all, it was six and a half years since he’d spoken to the bride in person. He didn’t even know the groom, who had barely featured in Emma’s letters over the last year. And yet, he felt indebted to the to-be Mrs. Frank Churchill.

A few days later, in the lull before New Year’s, he sat down with a bottle of scotch (he felt it was fitting) and willed his mind go back. Finding it painful, he first set the scene.

_“Just recently, by air mail, I received an invitation to a wedding that will take place in Scotland on February 3rd. It happens to be a wedding I’d give a lot to be able to get to, and when the invitation arrived, I thought it just might be possible for me to make the trip abroad, expenses be hanged. However, I’ve since decided not to go, partially on account of helping my own_

_mother move to Arizona just a week before. She is nearly sixty, and my brother and I don’t trust her to be alone in Chicago during the winter anymore._

_“All the same, though, wherever I happen to be I don’t think I’m the type that doesn’t even lift a finger to prevent a wedding from flatting. Accordingly, I’ve gone ahead and jotted down a few revealing notes on the bride as I knew her over six years ago. If my notes would cause the groom, whom I haven’t met, an uneasy moment or two, so much the better. Nobody’s aiming to please, here. More, really, to edify, to instruct.”_

George gritted his teeth. He poured another measure of liquor, drank it with no regard for the expense, and dove in.

_“In April of 1944 I was among sixty American enlisted men who took a rather specialized pre-invasion training course, directed by British Intelligence, in Devon, England...”_

Several hours later, George felt his heart pounding. He was unsure if the alcohol, of which he’d been steadily consuming, or the memories were to blame. He fished out a new- looking wristwatch from the drawer of his writing desk and saw that it was nearly 4 A.M. His mind was racing, but numb to any control he might have enacted on it. He tried to remember how that crystal clock face had looked on a thin, winter-pale wrist. It took some effort, but when he could see it in his mind, the storm felt like it had quieted.

Whenever he held the object, he felt connected to the other times it’d brought him peace in his life. Sometimes it was difficult to reconcile those dark moments, but the watch seemed to allow him to believe every aspect of his life – war, heartbreak, shame, weakness – it had all happened to one person, just like how a wristwatch traveled all over Europe amidst a war. When it reached its destination, it had never been so broken that it didn’t do its job. Maybe the crystal had broken, and it stopped keeping time, but that wasn’t what it was for anyway.

George moved the watch back into his bedside table that night. The next day, he folded the letter into an envelope without reading it. He addressed the letter to a small village ‘close enough to London that all the children were evacuated.’ As a last thought, he slid in a title page, for lack of a better explanation. It read For Emma – with Love and Squalor.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have no idea what’s going on, I recommend reading For Esmé – with Love and Squalor by J.D. Sallinger. It is about eleven pages long and provides the setting and backstory for this story. The characters in this story are all taken from Jane Austen’s Emma, with a few small edits. Mr. Woodhouse has been reimagined into Emma’s younger brother, Henry. Isabella’s husband has been changed as well, since George Knightly is an American WWII veteran. George and Emma met for a piece of an hour when he was stationed in Devon in 1944, and have been corresponding regularly since late 1945. There are many similarities between Emma and Esmé, so for the purposes of this story, the short story is all ‘cannon’, except that George Knightly has never been married as of the first chapter and was 19 when he met Emma, not the implied 22 or 23. I will be basing the characters on their depictions in the novel, not the movie, but you will be fine if you haven’t read it, since the characterization is so spot-on. Emma is 20 in the first chapter.


End file.
